Global Narratives

The Deep Electrification pathway envisages a world in which renewable electricity becomes the cheapest energy carrier, driven by rapid cost declines in wind and solar generation, as well as battery storage. As a result, renewable deployment accelerates and there are increasingly high levels of electrification.

This pathway was created to explore how the rapidly declining cost of renewables could revolutionise the energy transition. It focuses on capturing the latest cost reductions in key zero carbon technologies, and the potential for continued technological progress into the future.

Assumptions:

• Rapid cost reductions in renewables means that the LCOE of solar falls to <US$10/MWh by 2050 in all world regions except Japan
• Variable renewables are integrated into the power system via flexible demand, battery storage and hydrogen generation
• There is rapid electrification of all end-use sectors, driven in part by subsidies for electric vehicles and roll-out of charging infrastructure
• Biomass availability is limited to 100 EJ/yr
• Annual geological sequestration of CO₂ is limited to 4 GtCO₂/yr (for fossil CCS, BECCS and DACCS combined)

This pathway tries to find a way to limit warming to 1.5ºC with only minimal amounts of carbon dioxide removal. This pathway would require even faster and deeper reductions in fossil fuel usage and production than the other pathways due to this limited CDR reliance. The pathway also uses the set-up described in SSP1, which means it assumes the world shifts to more sustainable and equitable development.

Assumptions:

• There is only 75 GtCO₂ of cumulative CDR across the century. Socioeconomic development follows an optimistic pathway with high GDP and low population growth, also as a consequence of policy interventions in the areas of education and gender equality
• There is a general trend towards higher resource efficiency and environmentally more conscious lifestyles, which reduces overall energy and material demand

Note: This scenario is an SSP1 variant and not the main scenario referenced in Strefler et. al (2021).

The Net-Zero Commitments pathway limits global warming to 1.5°C through stringent climate policies and innovation, reaching global net zero CO₂ emissions around 2050. It implements some of the major net zero commitments announced by major economies, including net- zero GHG by 2050 in Australia, Canada, Europe, UK, Japan, New Zealand and USA, net zero GHG by 2060 in China and Russia, and net zero CO₂ in India by 2070. It also integrates some of the damages from climate change to the energy system, which results in further accelerated emissions cuts to avoid these damages.

Assumptions:

• Immediate and smooth policy reaction with implementation of optimal carbon prices immediately after 2020
• Regional differentiation and high policy coordination across sectors in each region/country
• Medium levels of carbon capture (applied both to biomass and fossil fuels) to achieve net zero GHGs

Note: The Deep Electrification, Minimal CDR Reliance and Net-Zero Commitments pathways are not used for China. This is because of limitations with the data availability for China from the AR6 scenario database. These limitations are only present for the R10CHINA+ region in the scenario database, and do not affect the profiles for other countries. In the case of China, data is sourced from a more recent update of the Net-Zero Commitments pathway, produced by REMIND-MAPIE 3.2-4.6 as part of the NGFS research project. This is the only pathway used for China, in addition in the power sector with the Reduced Asset Stranding pathway.

Unlike the other pathways presented here, the Reduced Asset Stranding pathway is derived from multiple global models and adjusted to better avoid the burden of stranded assets on developing countries.

More specifically, the Reduced Asset Stranding pathway makes three key adjustments on the country level, which are:

• To increase the pace of power sector decarbonisation in developed countries
• To avoid building new coal- and gas-fired power stations in the developing world
• To use the emissions headroom provided by these first two steps to slightly relax the pace of coal phase-out in the developing world.

This therefore reduces the asset stranding associated with the construction of new gas- and coal- fired power stations which would need to be retired ahead of schedule to align with 1.5ºC through a slightly slower retirement of coal-fired plants in the developing world. These adjustments also better represent the call in the Paris Agreement for developed countries to take the lead in reducing emissions. More information can be found in the Methodology page.

This pathway has only been used for the power sector.